Lucy Overboard
by thejordanandhervices
Summary: Based on the 1987 film, Lucy is a privileged woman who hires carpenter Natsu to build a closet on her yacht while they're up for repairs in small-town Elk Cove. When it's not done to her liking, she sends him overboard without paying, but when she falls overboard that evening and loses her memory, Natsu decides she can pay off her debt as maid, wife and mother of his four children.


**Based on Overboard with Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell**

**If you want to see the movie beforehand, that's cool, but I made sure to spell everything out, so it's not necessary.**

**The rights to Fairy Tail and Overboard belong to their respective owners, not me.**

**I hope you enjoy it!**

* * *

Lucy surveyed the deck of her yacht, watching the small crew bustle about. The engine had been on the fritz for days and they were lucky to have made it here. Or so they said.

_Here_ was a term used very loosely if you asked her. They were in a small coven town somewhere off the coast of Oregon and all she could see looking off the port side was fog. Fog and desperation.

She retreated back to the cabin and found herself in her closet, where she usually found herself when she was bored or trying her best to avoid her husband. Shoes and clothes were Lucy's pride and joy, having nothing else she truly cared about. When you could have everything, what really mattered? But right now these shoes were strewn about, having no place in the few cubbyholes available. "Erza!" she called for her butler, "Bring me the phone!"

* * *

"Natsu, you've got a request!" Mirajane called from the doorway of the shop. "It's a yacht down at the harbor. Some kind of emergency, you'd better go now."

"Gotcha." He called back, grabbing his tools.

Natsu stopped and stared, the thing before him as more of a cruise liner than a yacht. He scanned the deck looking for someone that could tell him if he was in the right place. "Hello?" he called.

"State your business!" Shouted an authoritative voice from the top deck, a voice that had been commanding people from the time it could say "no."

"Wow, that's a nice gun you got there!" Natsu whistled, ignoring him and admiring the weapon glittering in the dull light of another foggy day.

"Yes, it's very expensive. I have lots and lots of them." Said the man, tall with brown hair gelled back as tightly as the pants he was wearing.

"I was called to do some emergency carpentry?" He asked, hoping he wouldn't have to spend more time here than had to.

"That's my wife's department." He said and turned around, disappearing back into the giant cabin.

"Uh, could you tell me where she. . . is?" asked Natsu, running a hand through his thick pink hair, making it stick up all over. He boarded the ship and poked around until he heard a shrill voice descending the stairs in front of him.

"-and I want to be in pristine condition when I get it back, Erza. It's worth more than your pay in a year. Who is this?"

The woman standing before him was short with amazing curves and beautiful golden hair pulled back into a tight bun with a jeweled hair piece pinned on the side, probably giving her a neck ache, judging by the size. Maybe that's why her face was pinched up like that.

"I _said, _who are you? What's your first language? Do you even understand me?" She barked at him.

"I'm, uh, Natsu. The carpenter you sent for?"

At his explanation, she huffed and turned, "You're late, follow me."

He followed her retreating form towards the ship. Natsu couldn't help but notice her ridiculously small pink bikini as it shifted under her nearly-sheer cover-up. She clicked her way up the stairs and back into the door she appeared from.

"This is the bedroom."

"Wow! Beautiful," He said in awe at the glamour of the room. He, and everyone else who knew him knew he wasn't the kind of guy who had exceptional taste, but the room's elegance was unmistakable. Everything in it was white and gold. The bed frame shone like the crown of some distant king and was draped in gauzy white netting. The floor and furniture was cream shag and there was not a spot on anything. Natsu wondered how he was going to keep it that way as he worked. But what he didn't see was an emergency.

"-and here is the closet. As you can see, this just won't do. I need more space for all my shoes and a place for my lingerie. I just _can't _keep going in and out of these boxes all the time." She said, throwing her hands in the air before brushing past him out of the closet.

Natsu was confused, this didn't seem at all like the emergency he dropped everything to come here for. It looked like. . . "I see, you want me to remodel your closet."

Lucy paused, giving him a look, "Isn't that what I've been explaining in some detail?"

Before he could respond, she had turned her attention to her butler, Erza. He surveyed the existing closet before him as she berated her servant over what seemed like sub-par fish fetuses, a subject of which he could not even fathom having an opinion on. So instead he thought about wood and the way he was going to organize the drawers since he had decided to take the job. Really, who lied about an emergency, what could they _possibly _have to hurry for?

He was trying to figure out how he was going to fit all the drawers and racks she wanted in the too-small space when she turned back to him. "You have exactly forty-eight hours to complete it, I suggest you get started. Erza will be watching you."

Natsu snorted but didn't respond.

* * *

"Oh yes! Listen Reedus, I simply _must _have that painting! It's the sweetest little thing! You'll bid for me, won't you?" Lucy begged from her seat in the sun on the deck, thinking of the darling little watercolor. It was made by a small artist in the south of France and depicted a young couple in a sailboat on the sea. It was made so that they were a little fuzzy, but the love on their faces as they gazed into each other's eyes was so clear it made her heart ache.

"Good, bid $1.7 million."

"Holy shit!" Natsu exclaimed from the other side of the window. The bedroom looked out onto the deck Lucy was laying in and it was difficult not to hear her piercing voice, especially with his overly keen ears.

Lucy sat up at the exclamation, looking over to her fiancée who was clearly occupied with cleaning his gun that he never seemed to use.

She waltzed back into her room, walking past him to one of the drawers, Lucy bent over, exposing the majority of her creamy skin. As much as he was loath to admit it, she was beautiful. More than beautiful. The only thing to mar her shin was an off strawberry-like birthmark on her left thigh.

"Forks were invented so that man could at least make a pretense of separating himself from the apes." Lucy sneered at Natsu, who was lounging on her immaculate white chaise, though she doubted very much that it still was.

He looked down at the crackers and cheese on the plate and in his hand. Was she shitting him? "So were thumbs." He said to her retreating back.

She paused, "What was that?" She asked, turning back to him.

"Nothing," He mumbled, if he got fired, that would be over six hundred dollars down the drain. Money he desperately needed. "Just. . . my stomach." Which was probably just as true, Natsu was _constantly_ hungry, something that couldn't be anything but ignored.

"Well, try to control your bodily noises so that I can hear myself think."

* * *

"Ugh, these gnats keep landing on my wet nail polish! I suppose I'm supposed to walk around with their little corpses stuck to my fingers, is that it?"

"Lucy, please." Dan, her husband reprimanded.

"It's easy for you to say! You don't have to sit out here in the brine with your hair frizzing to oblivion! I look like a bushman," She sulked. Staying out here wasn't ideal, but she would like being in the same room with that odd, salmon-colored mountain man even less.

"Well, why don't you go inside and get out of the sea air?" Dan suggested, getting annoyed.

"Because that sweaty man is still working on my closet, I doubt if he's even housebroken!" She said, distaste screwing up her fine features.

"Oh, I think they housebreak each other-"

"Sshh!" Lucy cut him off.

"What?"

"He's listening."

"Who?"

"That carpenter!"

"He's been hanging on our every word for the last two days." Lucy said, brown eyes narrowed in distrust at the window to her bedroom.

"It's your project, Lucy, you deal with it." Dan said, turning away from her to focus his attention on a questionable magazine obtained for him by Erza at his request.

"The engines are ready, sir." Their captain said, approaching them cautiously. If there was anything he learned from working for both the Straight's and the Heartfilia family is that you approach them slowly and meekly. They can smell fear.

"Well then! Let's get going!" Dan said excitedly, dropping his magazine. Lucy didn't even flinch when she saw it, she knew. She always knew. She also knew his interest was not just satisfied by the magazines he stashed all over the place.

"I've finished, ma'am." Erza said, capping the nail polish, "Would you like your jewelry back on?"

"No. I'm still tacky."

Natsu fumed as he collected his tools. This woman had been verbally abusing him for the last two days and he was _not_ the type to just take it. If it had just been him, like it used to, he would have already quit or beaten a few people up. Probably both. But the years had changed his life in ways Natsu could never have dreamed.

"Just keep quiet for ten more minutes, collect the money and get the _hell _out of here." He said to himself, grinding his teeth.

"Well! Are we amusing you?" She asked from the doorway. He hadn't heard her approach. "What. . . is this?"

"Um, well, I'm done. . . I've finished." He said awkwardly, feeling less guilty than he should for insulting a client. He began to fidget, sticking his thumbs into the waistband of his jeans. "Er. . . what do you think?"

"What is it?" She asked, confusion and anger warring inside her.

"Well, it's a shoe rack, but with a twist!" He turned the rack, and then back, "Uh, you ready?"

When she didn't respond, he turned back and reached for the side where there was a crank. "You just turn the crank here. . ."

The two racks on the outside shifted as he cranked, making room for the ones at the back to come forward. "See!" He said excitedly, "This way it gives you twice the room!"

The smile melted off his face as he watched hers become pinched and sour, her eyes narrowing and her eyebrows draw together.

"Stop boring me with your absurdities. What's it made of?"

Natsu's hands fisted in his pockets and his face instinctively matched hers. "It's called wood, it's oak."

"Oak. An oak closet?" She repeated. "Why am I even surprised?!"

Irritated now, Natsu didn't try to hide his wearing patience. "I don't know, why _are _you surprised?"

"One would think you would know closets are made out of cedar! If not, we get moths."

"Well, lady, we don't _have _a moth problem here on the Pacific coast. If that's what you want, that's fine. I'll start over, but that's going to more than double my estimate. I've already done this one out of oak, so. . ."

Lucy snapped to attention, anger boiling over. "I'm not going to pay for your mistake!"

"Hey! I'm not just going to eat it on this deal!" He snapped back.

"Why not?" She sneered, "You've eaten everything else here! And you will eat it, because I want cedar."

"You may have _wanted _cedar, but you didn't _ask _for cedar."

Lucy turned her back on him and moved towards the door to the deck. "The entire civilized world knows closets are made out of cedar!" She yelled back without checking if he was following. They always were.

Natsu had had enough of this woman's shit. "Well down here, ma'am we ain't heard of no fancy cedar closets. No bathrooms, neither. Shit, woman! You're lucky I am housebroke!"

She whipped around so fast, Natsu thought today's hairpiece was going to go flying into the harbor. "You were listening."

"Well, it was kinda hard to avoid, your voice carries."

"You can avoid it now – you're fired!" She spat, voice dripping with venom.

"You're _unbelievable! _You know what? That's fine, just pay me the money you owe me."

Lucy could not believe the gall of this backwards hick. Did he know nothing? "The job was not done to my satisfaction!"

"I got news for you, lady! No job will _ever _be done to your satisfaction!"

"That's quite enough! Now get out!"

There was no way Natsu was going to leave without the money of two days' worth of work! "No problem! Pay me the money you owe and I'm gone!"

Seething, Lucy called out for the engines to be started. She knew they were listening; no one ever spoke to her this way. They were probably celebrating down there. She heard the sound of her yacht roaring to life under her feet and smirked.

"You know what your problem is?" Natsu asked rhetorically as he advanced, "You're so goddamn bored that you've got to invent things to bitch about! You haven't got a single thing to do but you _hair." _ He stepped forward, causing her to step back and fall onto the plush-covered bench by the railing. She covered her ears, but she could still hear his words as he continued. "Yeah! The closet was fine, you just needed something to take up your useless, empty, nail-polishing, toe-polishing, rich-bitch, sun-tanning days!"

Satisfaction welled up in him as he vented two days of building resentment. Why did this woman think she knew so much more than him! She knew _nothing _about him to make that assumption. He tore his tool belt off his waist to put back in his toolbox. Before he even had a chance to turn, she squealed and skittered backwards onto her feet.

"Don't touch me!"

"What?" Realizing what she meant, Natsu laughed humorlessly. "Hey lady, I may be hard up, but I'm not _that _hard up."

She may be beautiful, but there was nothing on this earth that would be worth the trouble she would cause him, he was sure of it. He wanted to get off the ship as fast as he could, but he was _not _leaving without his money.

"And!" he continued, leaning up against the railing, "I'm not going anywhere. . ."

Lucy saw her chance to be rid of the smelly man and she took it, thankful for his off-balance frame, wide shoulders and slim hips to her advantage and pushing him over the railing into the harbor.

"Hey!" He cried from the water, "Not my tools!"

Smug satisfaction gripped her as she watched his tools hit the water where they would no doubt be ruined or lost. That would show him to defy her; that would show _all _of them. Her crew had probably laughed and cheered at his comments. Well, who was laughing now?

"I'll get you for this!" He screamed, "Damn you, you owe me six hundred bucks! If I ever get you, lady, you're dead meat! Got that?!"

"I'm not bored!" She said almost to herself, "I'm quite happy! Everybody wants to be me!"

* * *

"Damn Gray, I lost _all _of my tools."

"I'll loan you some tools. We'll get you some part-time work." Gray said, handing Natsu a dry shirt for him to change into.

"What I need is a steady job. What about that part-time thing?" Natsu asked, pulling the old t-shirt over his head and bending down to slip his boots back on.

"I'm working on it. Listen, pretty soon we'll have that miniature golf course deal and we'll be fine."

"If I can hang on that long."

* * *

"He called you what?" Her dad asked, "Lucy, why are you so upset? Why in the world do you care what some carpenter from, what was it? _Elk Snout?_ thinks of you?"

Lucy huffed, it was Elk Cove but she didn't care enough to correct him. She'd said it plenty of times, herself. Besides, she had no response. Why _did _she care? He was nobody - less than nobody. He was a nobody from nowhere with nothing. "I'm sure I'm just premenstrual." She said what was expected of her.

"Then you must go right back to bed for at least two days."

There was a lull in the conversation before Lucy spoke again. "Dan mentioned having a baby again."

"If you have a baby, you won't be the baby anymore."

"True. Well, I must go daddy." She pouted.

"Bye bye sweetie."

Lucy hung up the phone and sat there for a minute, relishing the feel of the sunlight on her exposed skin. She frowned, "I'm not a bitch."

"Erza!" She called, "are you going to bring me my lemon or do I have to squeeze it from my hat?"

* * *

"Hey guys! I'm home!" Natsu called to the front of the little home as he got out of his pick-up. As he walked up, a woman came screaming out of the house, a giant house cat attached to her face and trailing toilet paper behind her.

"Happy! Stop that!" At the sound of his person's voice, Happy detached from the woman and sauntered back into the house.

"Are you Mr. Dragneel?" She asked, beginning to straighten her admittedly dowdy outfit, even to Natsu's eyes, and pick off the toilet paper as she headed to her car covered in dust from the single dirt road leading to the house.

"Yup!" He smiled, "Wow, you look like the morning after Halloween! Probably had a day like I did. What happened to you?"

"Monday is their first day of school and I came here to welcome your family. And what do I get in return? I get toilet-papered by your children!"

"Ah, they're just playing around!" Natsu brushed the comment off.

"Just playing around? They were about to douse the toilet paper in gasoline and strike. . ."

"Wait, wait! Stop. Sting and Rogue. Twins, right?"

"Yeah."

"They're in the middle of this arson period," He smiled fondly. "They don't know it, but I'm way ahead of them. I've got two fire extinguishers ready to go. But, hey, I didn't catch your name!"

"Minerva," Said briskly, getting into her car, throwing a ball that ha presumably thrown at her upon arrival out of the window.

"Nice to meet you!"

"I'm the principal of the school here." She paused, exasperated. "Your children are monsters!-"

"You won't think that when you get to know them!"

She sighed, "Where is their mother when all of this is going on?"

Natsu's smile dropped at the mention of his wife. "She died three years ago."

Not deterred, Minerva pressed on, "Mr. Dragneel, your children are totally lacking in parental supervision!"

"Hey, you don't have to tell me these kids are lucky!" He joked, knowing it would not go over well.

"Fine. You can joke all you want, but if you don't do something, I'm going to have to notify the proper authorities."

"I've had babysitters in here by the dozen! I'm. . . I'm kinda low in cash right now." He admitted, hating himself for it. "I'm new in town, but if I get a chance, I'll hire a housekeeper, okay?"

She threw the car into gear and gave him a look. "I'll believe it when I see it, Mr. Dragneel. Good day."

"I'm a good father!" He yelled after her. "Ah, what do you know?"

* * *

"Lucy, I want you tonight." Dan cooed from the other side of the bed.

Lucy groaned, adjusting the heating pad on her stomach and pulling at her white silk nightgown.

"How can you have your period every week?" He snapped, irritated. His mood switched immediately as the television in front of him began to play his favorite program, The World's Ten Biggest Yachts.

"Must you watch that thing incessantly?" Lucy asked, reaching for her lotion on the side table, lathering her arms in the thick peach cream.

"Yes, I must. It has a tawdry escapist quality that soothes my nerves."

"What you have to escape from, I can't possibly imagine." Lucy said, not looking up from her task. When she got to her hands, she paused. "Dan! I left my wedding ring on the deck."

"Well, what ca I do?"

She snuggled into her pillows, "Go and get it."

He finally looked at her, though his expression suggested she was out of her mind. "It's after midnight!"

"I don't care what time it is. I want it now!"

Dan returned his attention to the television. "I want to see who's in the Top Ten Yachts."

Fuming, she ripped the blankets off of her and stood up. "I'll get it!"

"Okay," He said, smiling.

Lucy fumbled her way to her slippers, rocking unsteadily with the boat as she fumbled her robe on right in front of the TV. She knew her actions would piss Dan of, and she reveled in it.

She made her way to the bow of the boat, rocking and sliding like a drunk. Finally she stood on the bench at the bow and looked into the crack between it and open ocean. There it was, glittering in the soft moonlight. She bent over attempting to reach it, when the yacht shifted violently on the rocky waves.

She lost her balance, grabbing the pole of the small flag in front of her for dear life. "Erza!" She called out, though Erza couldn't hear her over her iPod, which she was listening to below decks.

The boat shifted the other way and she was thrown forward, tripping over the many pillows and falling into the sea.


End file.
